Wrangle over cost grounds air guards

Much vaunted and long delayed plans to put sky marshals on international flights have been held up yet again, this time because Qantas has objected to paying for their seats.

The Minister for Customs, Chris Ellison, announced last week that marshals would begin immediately on flights between Australia and Singapore after a deal was finalised between the two countries - the only agreement so far.

But the plan collapsed yesterday when Qantas told Senator Ellison's office it was not prepared to bear the commercial loss of providing seating for up to two marshals per flight.

The company would not comment directly on the disagreement yesterday except to confirm marshals were not yet on the flights: "Qantas is continuing to work closely with the Government to improve aviation security including the implementation of the sky marshal program," a spokesman said. He added that the airline had borne the cost of the domestic program, which has been operating, without incident, for two years.

Aviation sources say the international program has also been held up because of delays in finalising agreements with countries near Singapore, such as Malaysia and Indonesia, to which a flight might be diverted in a crisis.

"You can imagine the complication of a flight landing in another country with one or two armed marshals aboard," one source said.

But another source close to the marshals program said all agreements had been sealed in recent weeks. "We were ready to go until today when we got a call saying everything was off because Qantas wouldn't pay for the seats. The Government has been negotiating everything else for months and this was the last piece of the puzzle. Now it's all off again and the travelling public are the ones who lose out yet again."

The Government has been promising the program for the past 14 months, since the Prime Minister, John Howard, announced after the Bali bombings that the overseas expansion of the program was "a matter of priority".

A spokesman for Senator Ellison confirmed the latest delay.

"The issue of payments for seats is one of a number of issues currently being finalised between the Government and Qantas. The Government is confident that these issues will be resolved satisfactorily."